James Joyce

Is there always more to say about Ulysses?

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Portrait of James Joyce by Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1934, National Gallery of Ireland, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Is there always more to say about Ulysses? Yes, there is always more to say about Ulysses. Particularly in the wake of the tidal wave of the centenary . . . and the wonderful writer Colm Tóibín always adds to my view with his deft prose and deep curiosity.

From the London Review of Books: Arruginated: James Joyce’s Errors by Colm Tóibín

In this article from the LRB about the errors—volitional or otherwise—that Joyce makes in the text, I found myself bemused by the desire to drill down to fact in the face of the magnificent vision of Ulysses. 

Having spent some time in the text—reading, teaching, singing, researching and puzzling—it is interesting to know that we are still learning how the details of the text match or do not match the historical experience of Dublin in 1904. As Tóibín considers, some of it matters (the final notes), some of it may not. Sometimes we go off on galloping goose chases, sometimes we disappear down holes more fitting the Mad Hatter. As I read this, I was thinking about the sweet satisfaction I have in peeling back layers of the text with both new and practised Ulyssians. 

Our Slow-Read Ulysses group has found a rhythm of play in a careful exploration of the text that expands both my knowledge of the text and my understanding of what a close encounter with a great work may yield. While some of our own work echoes Tóibín’s detective work traced in the article, we also find moments of lift-off, when the beauty of the prose and Joyce’s technical mastery of the language launch us into new realms of thought—about our relationship to history, about identity, around gender play, about our relationship to the material world . . . and how Joyce pulls us in with his shimmering net of wordplay, allusion and musicality in language. 

In Arruginated, I am faced with fragments and details that may offer verisimilitude to the real world, or remind me how much the experience of the real world is always sifting in my mind—against my memories, imagination and sensory limits and embellishments. This puts me in mind of our wonderful work in the Finnegans Wake group, as it shifts and adapts to the needs of life and time, goes from digging in fragments (the middenheap with the Hen) with an eye towards the wider scapes of sky or water. This was echoed in the recent Anselm Kiefer exhibition on Finnegans Wake which included rubble as part of the installation. I had not realised that Kiefer’s home had been destroyed by bombing on the day he was born; the rubble he used in the installation was from his childhood home—he had played in that rubble, and the tactile experience of rubble informs his vision of fragments and broken pieces that gave him insight into the Wake. 

We are continuing our Slow-Read of Ulysses in a few weeks . . . there are spaces available if you would like to join us, anyone who has meandered through Ulysses is most welcome. You can do a series (usually six weeks of meetings) and then drop out and return as you wish and as life allows. We will be digging into Aeolus next: the pace is comfortable (3-5 pages p/week), the work is shared and we have lots of laughs. And, o, there is some learning along the way!

Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Thoughts on the ‘Slow-Read’ experience

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Photo by Nareeta Martin on Unsplash

My mother frequently told me that I lacked patience. As in, utterly and completely, almost like I was missing an internal organ. I turned the criticism into a kind of badge – of course I had no patience, but look at how much I can do all at once! Frantic movement as a superpower . . .

But high speed has its issues and one of the gifts of passing years is more time for thinking – and re-thinking. So, when Salon facilitator Mark Cwik first named and developed the ‘Slow Reading’ practice, I was intrigued but not quite certain this was my style. 

And then came Finnegans Wake.

I had resisted the Wake knowing that it is considered by many to be unreadable, but since a few honoured Salonistas kept nudging – even (Rachel) putting an excerpted book of Shem and Shaun in my hands – well I thought, what the hell: I have spent enough time with James Joyce and really, how long can I avoid the Wake? We began in 2017 and some iteration of the Wake group continues to trip through its ‘appatently ambrosiaurealised’ pages, seeking earwigger references and disappearing down the most unexpected rabbit holes – sometimes intoxicating, sometimes infuriating, but always opening up my understanding of the underlying structures of human history and identity. We read 3-5 pages a week. Some of the group have managed an entire read of the book already and we are re-Cycling-Vico-like through. And always learning.

Thus the Wake work led me to consider other Slow Read possibilities – and Ulysses was the obvious next choice. Although new readers may at first baulk at the six-month study, once they are rolling in the Bloomian pages, most chime in that we need MORE time! But once through a first read – once the arc of the book is in your mind – you are ready for a more thoughtful approach, where we can really discuss each paragraph with attention. 

In the Slow-Read Ulysses that started in September 2022, we have wonderful readers from all over the world, contributing expertise on philosophy, Jewish traditions and scholarship, psychological theories, economics, gender relationships, music, Irish history, aesthetics, narrative form, medical practices, modernism . . . we are truly eating with relish.

This week’s discussion of six pages, for example, included reflections on the Language of Flowers; desire as articulated in masochism; the Mary/Martha story from the Gospels of Luke and John, and how these are reflected in our Martha and Mary (Molly) characters; the use of the colour yellow to signal treachery; the figuration of Black people in missionary narratives; Marxism; Matzoh; what motivates people to turn to faith; relationship between colonial and religious projects; the geography of interior thoughts; the narcotic quality of sexual fantasies; pious frauds (echoing Pope Pius X); the relief of Sophocles on no longer being driven by lust . . .

The Ulysses Slow Read – like the Wake – is not a three or five year commitment. Rather, it invites participants to dip in and out as their lives allow and interests demand. Anyone who has previously read Ulysses can dive in to a 6-8 week series of study sessions (as long as there is space) and pick up the thread wherever we are. Each week, about half the participants adopt a particular passage and present this to the group with their own research or reflections. 

After years of reading and teaching Ulysses, I am so thankful for this practice of reading slowly and thoroughly. I am discovering gems that I have previously skipped over, and finding correspondences that I only now realise. The Slow Read also gives me time to explore more thoroughly the secondary literature, especially useful as there was a tremendous flowering of new work to coincide with the centenary celebration of the book in 2022. 

I would not say I have yet learned patience, but my mother would be surprised at my increasing ability to cultivate it. I have a practice – in both the Wake and Ulysses Slow Read sessions – that builds my capacity for attention and (the reward of exercising patience?) complexity. And I have learned so much: my sense of wonder expands with each dive into the realms of art, history, human nature, and the weird and beautiful intricacy of the human mind. 

BBC Arena ‘James Joyce’s Ulysses’

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For Ulysses readers past, present and future who didn’t catch Adam Low’s film James Joyce’s Ulysses on BBC2 last night, it will remain available to view online for the next eleven months.

Over an hour and a half the film visits Trieste, Zurich, Paris and Dublin, telling the tale of how Joyce came to write his masterpiece, the struggle to get it published and how he and Nora Barnacle lived their lives together. With archive footage and contributions from scholars and writers including Salman Rushdie, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Howard Jacobson, Eimear McBride, Paul Muldoon, John McCourt, Nuala O’Connor, Vivien Igoe and many others. Apologies to those who can’t access the BBC but catch it if you can!

Closer to Fine

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Photo by Mark Lewis on Unsplash

August is the moment when I breathe in and gaze across the previous months of studies and work. This August feels particularly welcome: the Salon has grown with the incredible energy of the new facilitators (new as in going from myself and Mark a few years ago to a current staff of 13) and Nicky Mayhew keeping the Salon ship moving with communications, strategic advice and administrative support. We are also indebted to Sophie and crew at TPR media who have helped raise the Salon profile with interviews and news on Start the Week, BBC London and more.

At the heart of our work is always the experience of the studies themselves: the magical and enriching journey through the words into the blossoming spaces of imagination and contemplation. I am sharply aware that all around me the world is challenged with wars and violence, with climate change and suffering. I am also aware that the monsters of intolerance and prejudice are swelling, greedy in their appetite for discord. Sometimes I realise the Salon discussions offer an escape—an immersion in the artistic rendering of the human mind that emphasizes the lyric and generous visions of writers able to illuminate all aspects of our living.

But it is more than an escape. Within Salon discussions we learn to form and speak our insights to provocative ideas. We learn to hear each other and even—perhaps especially—to disagree respectfully, opening our minds to differing views and the reflections of others. Stepping out of our individual perspective and entering into the mind of an author, a character, another being—this is the practice of empathy. I experience this both in deep reading and discussion of the literature, and also in focused engagement with the participants in a Salon discussion. 

Mohsin Hamid recently explored the dangerous progression he has witnessed towards binary thinking and how reading and writing literature pushes against it, read his article here.

“I wrote this novel to explore what it has been to be myself, and also to explore what it is to be other selves. I intend it as a means for readers to do the same. We risk being trapped in a dangerous and decadent tyranny of binaries. Perhaps fiction can help us investigate the space between the ones and zeroes, the space that presently seems empty, impossible, but then, when entered, when occupied, continues to expand and expand, bending and stretching and eventually, possibly, revealing its unexpected capacity for encompassing us all.”

Mohsin Hamid

August is also the time (well, of course, it should be July or earlier but, hey, we are all doing the best we can) when we plan and announce the bulk of the studies for the coming year. This has been a big year for Joyce and Ulysses (one hundred years since publication) and I am still basking in the afterglow of the three study groups—one for returning readers, with whom I was privileged to explore again, more deeply, this incredible work that celebrates curiosity, fantasy, and desire while skewering one-eyed prejudicial perspectives. The Bloomsday festivities—in London and in Dublin—were particularly sweet this year. The building Ulyssian energy has prompted a new ‘Slow Read’ of the great book, commencing in October, rolling forward in ten-week waves so participants can join along the way. This format echoes the Finnegans Wake approach that is now on its second cycle after four years of study, and it is so satisfying to dwell in such a complex text with the time and space for careful consideration. 

There are so many wonderful and unique studies coming in the next few months. I am still harnessing the right words to express the particular magic of the travel studies—this past year in St Ives, Umbria and Greece—these adventures create on-going groups connected through their combined love of literature and adventure. We are working on the travel offerings for the coming year, and this year’s September/October St. Ives studies are in place with one remaining space for Virginia Woolf’s The Waves as I write.

Thinking across the variety of genres, historical and social contexts that we offer in the Salon, an old verse from the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls plays on the edges of my mind. My hungry brain seeks an answer, THE answer (how to fight inequities in power and resources, what is the best way to live, what confers meaning on our existence?), but the study of great writing bends my mind towards possibilities and means of expanding my understanding. Art can offer a gasp of insight to the big questions—not to stop the asking but to find a moment of solidity on the climb. 

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine, yeah

Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine

Calling all Joyce enthusiasts – Bloomsday looms!

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Salon Director Toby Brothers & salonista Sheila Fitzgerald celebrating Bloomsday 2021

Ulysses – the story of Leopold Bloom’s day-long Dublin odyssey on 16 June 1904 – was published in February 1922, making this year’s Bloomsday the one-hundredth anniversary.

A quick reminder of some of the Salon-related celebrations taking place over the coming week (click on links for more information):

Meanwhile, a group of enthusiastic salonistas will be visiting Dublin to join the festivities on location . . .

Enjoy!

Bloomsday – a play for radio

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James Joyce in 1888, age six

Have you noticed the way in which, when there is more than one child in a family, each of them tends to be given a particular role? In my case, my mother always used to say that she hoped I would become a banker, or a lawyer – someone who would earn enough money to look after her in her old age. My brother, by contrast, was expected to be ‘an Artist’. It wasn’t entirely clear what this should involve, but clearly included him being somewhat unstable but brilliant, bringing reflected glory to his parents because of his talent, even if the consequence might be a painful (and impoverished) life… It didn’t really matter than I wrote poetry (and had no interest in banking), or that my brother quite liked the idea of having a comfortable and stable life (and maybe even helping to look after his parents in old age). In both our cases, growing up involved us having to work out our own responses to the expectations we were born into…

It won’t come as any surprise, then, that when I started reading about the life of James Joyce, I quickly became fascinated about his relationship to his younger brother, Stannie. As the eldest son of an eldest son, James was his father’s favoured child, carrying all his father’s frustrated hopes for fame and glory. Stannie did his best to follow in his brother’s footsteps, but that meant he was always a step behind – looking up with admiration (and some envy) at his brother’s achievements. From his teenage years onwards, Stannie kept a diary, much of which was filled with commentary on his brother’s life. Some of this was published posthumously, as The Dublin Diaries. He became Joyce’s first reader and critic – and gathered materials for his brother to use in the short stories that were eventually to be published as Dubliners. When Joyce went into exile in Trieste with Nora Barnacle, Stannie followed them out there; working tirelessly to earn enough money to allow his brother to write, often ‘rescuing’ him from the bars of Trieste, where he feared his brother was dissipating his talents. Joyce never fully acknowledged his brother’s contribution. Indeed, he cut the character based on him (Maurice) almost entirely from the final version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oh, and when it was finally published, he forgot to include the promised dedication to his brother in Dubliners.

Even today, with biographies and novels about the lives of Joyce’s father, John, his wife Nora, and his daughter Lucia, there is still no full-length book about Stanislaus Joyce. So when I joined the Lit Salon to re-read Ulysses, which I’d first had a go at when I was at university, it was no surprise that I also started to remember my fascination with James Joyce’s brother…

Eighteen months later, and I’m delighted to say that my radio play about the relationship between the brothers, Stannie and James Joyce, is going to be broadcast on RTE, to coincide with this year’s Bloomsday celebrations on 16 June. The play is called ‘Bloomsday’ and tells the story – in a fictionalized form – of the ten years when Stannie lived with James Joyce and Nora Barnacle in Trieste, between 1905 and 1915. Joyce wrote in Ulysses that ‘a brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella’, and in some ways my play was an attempt to bring Stannie back into the story – indeed, to tell his story, the one that he never really got to write.

A small coda however. After finishing work on the play, and having had so much pleasure reading Ulysses again, I decided to have a go at reading Finnegans Wake with Toby in the Lit Salon. Although I hadn’t known about it at the time I was writing my play, it turns out that Finnegans Wake puts the relationship between two brothers – Shem and Shaun – at the heart of the book. Shem is an artist; and Shaun is a postman, one who can only deliver letters, not write them. So even in his final work, the family roles were still being played out. But I think Finnegans Wake is also a reckoning with these family scripts too. Indeed, despite the contempt in which Shem seems to hold his brother, and the sense of disapproval that Shaun shows towards his irresponsible sibling, in the end they both recognise that they need each other. And love each other. The family roles each were asked to play is part of what makes them who they are; but in questioning and challenging those roles, they also each become the person they should truly be.

Nick Midgley’s radio play, ‘Bloomsday’, will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday 12 June at 8.00 pm (BST) and will be available online at rte.ie/dramaonone.

ULYSSES centenary!

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Toby reading to crowds gathered outside Shakespeare and Company in Paris,
100 years to the day since the first publication of Ulysses

Founder and Director of the London Literary Salon, Toby Brothers, is in Paris today to celebrate the centenary of publication of Ulysses. Scandalous in 1922, the book – widely acclaimed as a work of genius – remains controversial a century later!

Expect more news of Joyceans en fête in Paris on Toby’s return.

The Dead

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James Joyce’s The Dead

This longer short story is a rich feast through which one may taste the world of Joyce. Nothing – NOTHING – in Joyce is casual. Each image, reference, description carries symbolic resonance. Career Joyce scholars may try to align all the references – but I like W. Tindall’s attitude: “The text is not a system of mathematical equations but a flexible relationship of possibilities. . .” Bearing this in mind, we will dig at some of these references to give a sense of the richness in the writing.

Pay attention to the title even as it sits in contrast with the opening scene of the story itself – how is the image of death and the Dead brought up throughout the work? This story also holds to Joyce’s fascination with epiphanies – that moment of sudden and intense illumination when a profound truth is, or may be, revealed. Joyce describes the epiphany as ‘the most delicate and evanescent of moments’ that offer ‘a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in memorable phase of the mind itself’. For Joyce, these moments did not occur at the height of the heroic or dramatic gesture, but in the ordinary acts of life. What are the moments in ‘The Dead’ that fit this description? More importantly, what is revealed?

SALON DETAILS:

  • One-meeting intensive study, 2 1/2 hours

Ulysses

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James Joyce’s Ulysses

Ulyssesbooktower

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text—book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying—but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the only way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing—even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man—thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader—a broader thinker—even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted
to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was
very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skillfully guided us through it, her knowledge of
the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone
involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this
marvelous work was immense.”

—Ulysses Salon participant

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist attempts to enter in to the consciousness of a boy growing to young adulthood with an acute sense of the world around him. In the narrative, the writer attempts to collapse the boundary between reader and character consciousness: there is no authorial presence or exterior perspective and each section is written as though it springs directly from the thoughts of the boy at the time. This is why the opening feels like nursery rhyme then broken thought- but each image has weight and purpose. In fact, some have argued that the opening page contains the entire meaning of the rest of the book. But you have to read the whole thing for the layers to come through.

Reading Joyce is intimidating – no question. So why is the read worth the struggle?

There is a story of a celebrated Russian dancer who was asked by someone what she meant by a certain dance. She answered with some exasperation, ‘If I could say it in so many words, do you think I should take the very great trouble of dancing it?’

It is an important story, because it is a valid explanation of obscurity in art. A method involving apparent obscurity is surely justified when it is the clearest, the simplest, the only method possible of saying in full what the writer has to say.    

—R. Hughes, introduction to The Sound and the Fury

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